Genesis 1:14-19
And God said, "Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so. 16And God made the two great lights--the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night--and the stars. 17And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
Matthew Henry: “II. In particular, v. 16–18. 1. Observe, The lights of heaven are the sun, moon, and stars; and all these are the work of God’s hands. (1.) The sun is the greatest light of all, more than a million times greater than the earth, and the most glorious and useful of all the lamps of heaven, a noble instance of the Creator’s wisdom, power, and goodness, and an invaluable blessing to the creatures of this lower world. Let us learn from Ps. 19:1-6 how to give unto God the glory due unto his name, as the Maker of the sun.
Psalm 19:1-6
The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. 2Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. 3There is no speech, nor are there words, whose voice is not heard. 4Their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. In them he has set a tent for the sun, 5which comes out like a bridegroom leaving his chamber, and, like a strong man, runs its course with joy. 6Its rising is from the end of the heavens, and its circuit to the end of them, and there is nothing hidden from its heat.
Clay Miller: I shared some of this before but the sun is 865,000 miles in diameter. That is about 109 X the diameter of the earth. Its volume is 1.3 million times greater than the earth. It would take that many earths to fill it! That is near equivalent to filling a bowling ball full of poppy seeds! And the sun is considered a small star. There are stars 1,000 X larger than our sun! So going back to God creating the sun with its hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and .5 percent of some other elements…this is a big deal. It is an extreme emphasis on the power of God! He placed it about 93 million miles in outer space. It takes about 8 and ½ minutes for the sun’s light to reach the earth. So if you see the light of the sunrise at 6:09 a.m., that light left the sun at 6:01 a.m.
The sun has eruptions from time to time. And there are sunspots that appear from time to time as well. These sunspots can cause dramatic weather changes here on earth. Solar flares on the sun are the largest explosions in our solar system. The size of a typical flare is equivalent to several million 100 megaton hydrogen bombs! These can play havoc on earth’s man-made power systems.
Here is another reason you should thank God everyday…If the temperature of the sun, or the brightness of the sun was changed just a few small percentage points…life on earth as we know it would cease. God sustains us in ways that teeter us on the brink of extinction…and yet He won’t let the world be destroyed until His time.
